The Edo State Police Commissioner, Haliru Gwandu, has promised to clamp down on anyone who flaunts the template being proposed by the state government to replace the Community Development Associations (CDAs) in the state.

The Police Commissioner who said this during a meeting with Eminent Peoples Forum at the police officers mess in Benin City, noted that order had returned to the communities since the intervention of the state government and the Benin monarch, Oba Ewuare (II).

A bill is currently before the Edo State House of Assembly aimed at proscribing some of the activities of these Community Development Associations.

“The government has intervened and the paramount ruler has also spoken and we are beginning to see changes coming from various communities.

“In the past, we were always receiving cases of communal clashes, a situation where young chaps under the guise of CDAs will stockpile arms and they use those arms on the local administration and sack the local administration, they also sack the traditional administration and they constitute themselves as Kings in those particular communities.

“Those things will certainly be a thing of the past very soon – the government is coming with a template and police has already swung into action.

“We are not going to spare anybody under whatever guise. Whosever is coming out with type of identity other than the one which law permits, if he is trying to cause chaos, cause distraction in any society, that person will not be spared,” Mr Gwandu stressed.